Day: March 19, 2011

With just two wins in their last fifteen matches, this season has turned sour on the pitch for Sheffield Wednesday. Earlier on this season, the team seemed to be defying the clubs financial position and looked as if they may have a reasonable chance of a play-off place or better at the end of this season. Coinciding almost exactly with Milan Mandaric’s purchase of the club for £1, however, their form has collapsed. Their last win at Hillsborough was on the eleventh of December, a 6-2 win against another club at the start of a dramatic slump in form, Bristol Rovers. Since this, their results have taken a look to them that has occasionally looked bizarre. They’ve had to endure a 5-1 defeat at Exeter City, a 4-0 defeat at Leyton Orient as well as conceding four goals at home to both Peterborough United and Plymouth Argyle. This wasn’t supposed to be the outcome of Mandaric’s take-over at Hillsborough. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that Wednesday are one of the many clubs this season to have parted company with their manager. Alan Irvine was relieved of his duties at the start of February but Wednesday’s form hasn’t improved a great deal under the tutelage of his replacement, Gary Megson. There has to come a point at which this must be arrested. Wednesday are, at the start of...

Things are getting quite congested at the top of the Championship. Just six points separate second placed Norwich City from Nottingham Forest in sixth place in the table and, should Queens Park Rangers find themselves being docked points over the Alejandro Faurlin, even the relatively comfortable gap between them and the chasing pack – they are seven points clear of Norwich and ten ahead of third placed Swansea City – even that could start to crumble. Yet again, the top of the Championship table seems likely to offer us a tight end to the season. Part of the package that comes with such a close run-in is that the chasing pack, all jostling for position, have to play each other regularly as the season enters its final straight and this afternoon third-placed Swansea City are at home against sixth-placed Nottingham Forest. Both teams have already been granted a favour at lunchtime by struggling Sheffield United, who beat Leeds United by two goals to nil at Bramall Lane. It’s a result that has given Forest the opportunity to leapfrog over Leeds if they can muster a single point from The Liberty Stadium this afternoon. At this stage of the season, the margins that separate victory from defeat can be very slender indeed. Much is made of Nottingham Forest’s slide from grace since the glory days of the late 1970s, but...

It has been another busy week for Croydon Athletic of the Ryman League Premier Division. This is a club which has had, in all the wrong ways, a quite extraordinary season and their supporters could be forgiven for wondering whether fate is conspiring against their club. Following their promotion from Division One South of the league at the end of last season, it has felt as if everything that could go wrong for them has gone wrong and, after the events of the last few days, the future of the club could again be considered to be hanging in the balance after the collapse of the company that stepped in as recently as December to save them. Fodboldselskabet A/S had already attracted our interest as the company that stood between City Fans United and their vision of the rebirth of Chester FC. The Danish supporters group purchased a 51% share in Croydon Athletic four months ago, made the right noises, and it seemed for a while as if the position of the club might actually have finally stabilised. Earlier this week, however, Fodboldselskabet A/S filed for bankruptcy in Denmark. Their website forum was closed by Palle Rasmussen for what was described as “essential maintenance” from earlier this week, but it doesn’t appear that any announcement was made to the supporters of the club until the end of this week....